


Sixth Sense

by hausofval



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Adultery, Esme crys in the shower, Esmé's sixth sense, F/M, Heavy Angst, I'm talking about the book, New end to The Carnivorous Carnival, and i really like colette, as always, but its series aesthetics, esme is a smart bitch, everyone in unhappy in the end but it's well done, i love olivia's sass, listen to dark lady by cher please, lulu and esme dialogs are so in, olaf is an asshole, please, theres also revenge, they are all suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-04 10:45:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18342077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hausofval/pseuds/hausofval
Summary: "He is my boyfriend!"Jealousy, as you yourself know, is a noun that means a complex emotional state that involves a painful feeling brought about in relation to a person who is claiming exclusive love. Or I fear that the loved one will devote his affection to others. But it can also be translated as fear of losing something.Sometimes this feeling is without justification, with a sickly character, but Esmé Gigi Genevive Squalor knew the man who was dating, and knew that if he began to experience any idea related to experiencing this feeling of consuming it, it would be his sixth sense manifesting himself in name of their own protection.





	Sixth Sense

**Author's Note:**

> From the first time I read Carnivorous Carnival, Cher Stan' soul shouted all the similarities between this book and the song "Dark Lady"... so I wrote!  
> By the way, it's as if there was a "little Esmé" inside of her head narrating everything, just like your consciousness, but in the third person.
> 
> my friend said that it was like a giant monologue of the green one from Inside Out (2015)
> 
> I also do not support female rivalry, but ... this is the song!!!!!!!!
> 
> (English is not my first language, but I tried!!)
> 
> (if your first language of Brazilian Portuguese, please read in Portuguese on Spirit Fanfics or Watt ... in my opinion it got better!!!!)
> 
> Hope you like it!

When we talk about the sixth sense, we can refer to extra-sensory perception or intuition, which can be defined as hypothetical or theoretical knowledge based on foreboding.

The moment Viscount's car entered the Road of Rare Travel, the sixth most important financial advisor in the city, Esmé Squalor, felt in her heart that it would not work.

Starting with the asphalt of it. Her bumpy appearance simply kills her from the inside and the fact that every three miserable seconds, her body jumped from the monstrous passenger seat, did not help.

**_What the hell am I doing here?_ **

It was the question that flagellated her inside.

His face moved toward Olaf, searching for a reason for this absurd venture, and his sticky face, full of dust and dust - both impregnated for days-, which made him eccentric and consequently interesting to her, no longer made her animated as before. She stared at his smile and did not feel the cold in the belly that tormented her in her time as an actress.

If she was ever in love with him? I believe even she can not respond that, maybe passion was part of their relationship in the past, but believe me, love for sure was never part of it.

What had brought them together for much of their marriage, and in that dirty car full of talentless actors heading to a park with attractions whose dubious entertainment was in the middle of nowhere, was that she felt alive with the possible idea of a intense sexual intercourse and blood-soaked adventure with someone who treated her as a priority.

"But she is his girlfriend!" Is what you, reader, must imagine, but there are two problems in this speech. The first is that, legally, Esmé Squalor is a woman married 15 years ago to the heir to the Squalor fortune, Jerome.

The second is the truthfulness of realizing that the simple idea of another person using a possessive pronoun to describe the financier dressed in gold in the middle of the roat as a private property gave it a craving, and departing from it would sound even worse and completely out of the reality. But the opposite does not.

**_He is my boyfriend!_ **

Jealousy, as you yourself know, is a masculine noun that signifies a complex emotional state that involves a grievous feeling provoked in relation to a person for whom the exclusive love is intended and fear that the loved one dedicates his affection to others, besides afraid of losing something.

The financial consultant was never considered a jealous woman, always with numerous lovers of any gender explained by science, and in too short a time for both sides.

Sometimes this feeling is without justification, with a sickly character, but Esme Gigi Genevive Squalor knew the man who was dating, and knew that if he began to feel any suspicion of consuming it, it would be his sixth sense manifesting himself in the name of his own protection.

The sixth most important financial advisor in the city, an essential and irreplaceable member of the villainous side of the spin-off that destroyed the CSC, a woman who - in the name of the same organization - succeeded in making the Riemann hypothesis at 19 years old, would never become a woman betrayed. _Never._

Waking from his daydreams, Olaf touched her shoulder, warning her that they had arrived at their destination. When the brown-haired woman looked out the window, all her anguish at the beginning of this journey returned.

The place for recreation was located at the bottom of the Hinterlands, and it was not difficult for Esmé to discover this, since the terrible blue sunsets, characteristic of this abominably out-of-the-way place, was at its peak. When his almond-shaped eyes found the wooden plaque, with a faded painting of a lion chasing a child, along with the words "Caligari Carnival" written in sloppy letters, all the socialite wanted was to turn around, but there, looking at the representation of a faded boy in a green jacket, Esmé remembered the exact justification of his stay with Viscount on this journey: her _sugar bowl_ and the _Snicket File_.

Before her mind took her to other unrealities, the financier got down from her companion's car, trapping her needle heel in wet mud.

"What the hell!"

Her grunting can even be heard, but was muted by a more direct and loud, which came out shortly after:

"What the hell is this place?"

Tents trembling like living water monopolized the attention of Esme. Each with a unique symbol, painted on both sides with catastrophic intent to decorate this place.

**_Oh poor woman, you had a single task and you failed!_ **

But the dark tent with a single drawn eye made the false blonde's head wrap, though what came from inside the rusty door was what really took all her concentration.

The woman who leaned comfortably in the creaking door wore a long, shiny robe, which appeared to be kissing the floor, its coloring seemed to change as it moved, alternating from a matte black to a full of sequined gray.

His skin was clear and his facial bone structure was angular and specific, with cheekbones startled. But his eyes were as dark, as ripe, large, penetrating jabuticabas, as well as on the same two dramatic eyebrows, as dark as.

A dark-clad woman's hand was a kind of old-fashioned pendant, its all-glass eye-shape, which clung to a rope around her neck, while the other held a feline, also dark, if not thanks to its yellowish orbits, Esmé would not have noticed it.

"Welcome _My_ Olaf!"

Possessive pronouns, not spoken by Esmé, aimed at her boyfriend. The woman in dark colors simply did not know what she was talking about.

" _Your_ Olaf?"

The financier's incredibly unbelievable tone was frightening, but she was not going to freak out.

Her self-control was a plaid leather purse full of herself. Meanwhile, Olaf unfastened the thread that held his base and began to pull it, in the moment that he smiled at the welcome of the black-haired woman.

"I expect you and your troupe in the tent."

And just as it appeared, the woman came back inside.

_**Do not trust her!** _

 

_**-** _

 

When you enter an unfamiliar place, the best thing to do is: stay calm, be kind to the recipient, keep track of all your actions.

Esmé Squalor has many talents, from her fashion sense to her mathematical talent, but the biggest one is her nose. And when the financier entered Madame Lulu's tent, she woke up. Esmé can distinguish and mark the scent of a single person for years and Madame Lulu had a very specific smell.

_Molten caramel, dust and newspapers._

She smelled like a sweet walking library, and that was not a compliment.

Esmé Squalor is deadly allergic to caramel as long as he can remember, believe me, that sweet scent would remain in his memory forever. And the fact that the fortune teller wore such an unpleasant scent did not help the blonde to like her.

"Madame Lulu, give us some wine! Calling fires and running away from the authorities always makes me thirsty! "

Alcohol is a fuel for misfortune, and although she loved it, she knew that in an unknown location and with wine in her veins, her mind would sabotage her. Not being calm, not being kind to the receiver and losing control of all your actions is the least that the drink would do with it.

"I prefer skim milk, in a box."

As the faces of everyone present squirmed in surprise, she just completed her speech.

"That's the most _in_ thing for drinks!"

And as always, everyone disdained her comment and she intimately thanked him for it. After all this has always been your guide, to _let everyone around you distract yourself with their trifles, so you can always attack them by surprise_.

From this, Esmé did not hear anything since the scent of Madame Lulu was literally intoxicating. Gathering the remaining sanity she still had, she looked around for any sign of a library.

**_No place smells like a library without having one._ **

So she strolled in, staring at her archaic decorating items. Everything was very colorful, hiring with the lifeless woman who now whispered in her boyfriend's ear.

**_Forget him! Focus on what you want to find!_ **

It was what her mind screamed and she knew that her inner self was correct.

Find a library.

If the financier of the present said that to her past self, she would be greeted with good laughter, but something within her said she should just keep looking.

After a few seconds of walking, the blonde found a curtain of green beads, and when she finally touched it and was ready to step inside, she was awakened by the owner of the sweet perfume giving her the milk.

"I'm Esme..."

"Gigi Genevive Squalor, the sixth most important financial advisor in the city, please! I know you, after all what a fortune would be if I did not know. Only thing I can not understand is what makes my Olaf, please ... "

Under other circumstances, Esmé would have strangled her and finished with it -perhaps it was what all the curious looks expected- but she decided to be civilized.

"I am Count Olaf's girlfriend!"

The phrase would not carry a smile of satisfaction at its end, but with the shocked look of the fortune teller, it took anyway.

"You had never told me, _My_ Olaf, that Esmé was your girlfriend. Maybe Madame Lulu nón will let you and your troupe stay in my park. "

"Come on, Lulu ..."

The rest of the speech was not even heard by Esme. She was more than irritated. She never had to be defended, but the least he should have done was defending her.

**_But maybe he's using seduction as a weapon..._ **

The thought came to her mind like a limousine without brakes, but before her mind was full, the blonde focused on what really mattered.

**_Think of your sugar bowl and the Snicket File!_ **

But something inside her said that for this, she should find out where the scent of dusty books came from.

 

-

 

In the early afternoon, the treacherous sun of the hinterland reached Esme's bed and quickly awoke. Her arm followed in search of her boyfriend, but the only thing she found was the crumpled sheet.

Starting a temporary life in a place far from civilization has never been what the financier dreamed of, but an old robbery simply threw it there, and to get what is right, she would do anything. Including living temporarily in the middle of nowhere.

Grooming was completely irrelevant to anyone, even more so in the Hinterland. For anyone other than Esmé Squalor. Her choice was simple, compared to her fashion journey, a dress fulfilled and green. Before she even closed it, someone knocked on the door of her trailer, and with her clothes still open, she picked it up and was surprised at who was on the other side of it.

The woman who smelled of _melted caramel, dust, and newspapers_.

"Good afternoon Esmé!"

"What is it?"

"An apology, please!"

After receiving a curved eyebrow from a confused blonde in response, the fortune-teller lifted a tray that contained a deep dish with a thick soup and a small carton of milk.

"I talk to _My_ Olaf on our little _trip_. There I realize that being very rude to you yesterday and nón want to leave heavy weather. "

_My Olaf._

_Trip._

The two things sounded absurd, but Esmé just took a deep breath and did what she learned most in her acting time. She made herself confused.

"Heavy weather?"

"Yes, I want a harmonious weather!"

The crooked smile that the fortune-teller gave was enough to keep Esmé from taking her seriously.

"Oh sure, thank you darling!"

"Nón need to thank! And Esmé should read with Lulu! Madame Lulu make free reading to Esmé. "

"Thank you again, but I do not think I will..."

"You will! Lulu sees future, remember? "

And just as the woman, again in black, appeared, she turned her back and headed toward a partially new place in the landscape.

**_Do not trust her!_ **

Olaf's car was in a different place, and next to him, he held on a hook, was a cage.

The fortune teller got into the passenger seat and grabbed her purse, but although the fact that someone else spent time in her seat made her uncomfortable, the blonde who was watching was more interested in what was inside the cage.

The cage was full of lions, so crowded that it was not possible to say how many there were. The animals were angry, but certainly not more than Esme Squalor.

Her boyfriend started one of her countless speeches, but the math just watched from a distance the small crowd forming around him and began to think.

**_Were they Volunteer Feline Detectives? Where did Olaf find them? Were they trained? Maybe not the puppies, but I could use some tricks and ..._ **

His daydreams were scattered by the enthusiastic voice of the henchman with hands and hook as soon as the crowd began to leave after his boyfriend's speech.

"You were right, Boss! Things are about to get better! "

 Esme, even tried to pay attention to the subject, but was thinking too much about his own goals to pay attention to freaks being devoured for the sake of mass entertainment.

"Of course My Olaf's right, please!"

When Madame Lulu started talking, she managed to pull the blonde out of her thoughts again, further frustrating the financier with her annoying accent.

"He is a brilliant man, a brave man and a generous man. He had idea of lion appeal, please. He beats the lion with a boy, please. And he give the lion to Lulu. "

"He gave the lions to you? Seriously? As a gift?"

For the first time, Esme Squalor's voice did not sound as restrained as ever, and she felt terrible for not being able to control herself, but she had more interesting ideas going through her head.

Slowly, she headed toward her boyfriend. Even barefoot, her walk made people around her uncomfortable. Nobody dared to speak.

As she passed the cage, the financier could not stand it and ran her huge, pointed nails through the iron bars and the animals whimpered in fear, thus proving her thesis.

**_Yes, they were trained._ **

"So you gave lions to Madame Lulu ... And to me, darling, what did you give?"

Olaf's embarrassment was palpable, he blinked quickly and scratched his head while his posture was small compared to the woman in front of him.

"Nothing..."

His admission surprised everyone, but looking at his girlfriend, he saw that he needed to say more.

"But you can use my whip if you want."

And when Esmé was preparing to respond, the element of surprise appeared.

The element of surprise was, Madame Lulu _kissing_ Visconde Olaf's cheek.

"My Olaf gave it to Lulu lions, because I did marvelous reading of luck for him, please."

"You should have seen Esmé..."

At that moment, Olaf engaged in a fateful descriptive narrative of the place Esme believed to be a library. It was frustrating, but every word was saved in the blonde's mind, until the surname "Baudelaire" was said. At that moment, the financier smiled to the floor and, remembering the new workers in the park, wondering irrationally what it was like to get involved with someone so _innocent._

"...Then as a reward for the information, I gave her these lions."

"So... you mean that Madame Lulu also needs a carrot?"

Fernald's phrase, referring to the metaphor used by Olaf, was a surprise to all, and at that moment, Esme Squalor felt the first idea of respect for the man who carries hooks at the end of the arms.

"Tomorrow morning..."

Olaf continued his little monologue as if no one had interfered, and, feigning interest in his partner, his companion watched the fortune teller and in her look she found what she had already felt.

Madame Lulu hoped to be defended.

Maybe she did not need it, though, she wanted to. Just like herself last night.

"...Madame Lulu will consult the crystal ball again and tell me where the _Baudelaires_ are."

The extraordinary force that Esmé used not to laugh at should be worthy of a prize, but thanks to her self-control, she just nodded, and returned to her initial persona.

"And what other gift are you going to give her for that other information?"

"Be reasonable baby!"

And at that moment, Esmé sighed, losing all patience with her boyfriend, but that does not mean that she would lose her composure in public so she just kept listening.

"The lions will make the Caligari Carnival very popular, and Madame Lulu may devote more time to providing us with the information we need to steal the Baudelaire fortune."

"Whatever!"

Her grumbling can barely be heard, and she liked it, since the new sub topic of the conversation was the idea of a different kind of entertainment and building a moat.

**_A moat?_ **

"I will not dig!"

Although no one had refuted, the financier continued:

"I can not break a nail! In fact, I need to talk to Olaf, _alone_! "

The tone at the end of his sentence was self-explanatory to the pulsating vein in his forehead, then for his own good, Olaf agreed with her.

"Why, okay? Let's go to the guest trailer, there we will not be disturbed! "

And so the couple followed, toward the trailer where they spent the night, to start an important conversation.

 

-

 

"Olaf, I will be direct with you because I do not want to waste my time on something that, in my perception was already implicit in our relationship!"

Esmé started, even before locking the door.

"What?"

"I will not be betrayed! So if you're cheating on me, tell me _now!_ "

The scene became Renaissance. Esmé Squalor, standing with his arms crossed, reddish with anger, contrasting directly with his greenish dress, while Viscount, sitting on the double bed, stared in amazement at the woman in front of him.

"I'm _not_ cheating on you, Esme!"

_**He hesitated! And he smells something strange!** _

"Olaf, do not play with me! You could not bear it!"

"Honey, I ..."

"If I dream that you're cheating on me ... Do you betray me with Madame Lulu?"

"Esmé! She's a fortune teller!"

**_He did not deny it! And pay attention to his scent!_ **

"Good!"

**_Yeah! Pretend you believe!_ **

"Lie here sweetheart, let's have sex with rabies!"

**_He is so stupid! He throws his name in the mud! And you're still going to sleep with him?_ **

"I do not feel like Olaf."

"Honey..."

"Darling, unlike you, I survive the prison, but I would not want to keep my thesis alive from empirical research ... _So do not test me_!"

"Research what? Esmé you're starting to sound like my _ex girlfriend_!"

**_Georgina._ **

**_Oh, Georgina!_ **

**_Focus, Esmé!_ **

"And that's exactly what I'll be if you even think you betray me with a .... A nomad!"

"Honey..."

The smile that Olaf opened, before trying to start a new monologue, was like the last straw that overflowed a sea of irrationality and hatred in the financier.

"WHAT?"

_"If I were to betray you, it would never be with someone you know, let alone where you are!"_

And at that moment Esmé was speechless. She would never associate courage with Olaf, but as he stood up and touched her arm, shortly after uttering those words, she even admired his courage.

"I'm going to have Fernald dig a pit for us, okay?"

"No, you're going to tell Fernald to dig a fortune teller, Olaf! By the way, who the hell is Fernand?"

"He's ... it does not matter, Esme! I ... I'll surprise you today, is that enough to stop you fighting me?"

**_He wants to buy you! He knows he's done the wrong thing!_ **

"I do not know Olaf, I really do not know."

A moment of silence ensued, with the financier staring at the door of the trailer, and the villain stroking her hair. Until something inside Esmé lit up.

"Answer me one more thing, where you found this gift of the fortune teller ... these animals ... these ..."

"Lions?"

The simplistic way Olaf introduced them was enough for Esmé to find out that he did not know that those irrational carnivores were actually feline detectives tamed to smell of fires.

"Yeah! Lions!"

"I captured them at the end of the road! They were trapped in the cage and dropped there. Because?"

"Because ... I want one of the puppies, _darling_!"

 

-

 

_"If I were to betray you, it would never be with someone you know, let alone where you are!"_

Olaf's phrase did not leave Esme's mind. Though she never admitted it, her ego was shattered.

Esmé Gigi Genevive Squalor would never be betrayed. Or maybe, _she would_.

His options of names were scarce for a list of suspicions. But half of the VFD women did not find it in decades, so it is likely that some are even dead.

At least, the genre was specific.

Olaf had the archaic idea of irreversible and specific masculinity, or in other words fragile and full of compulsory heterosexuality, then he would only engage with women.

Looking at the window of his trailer, Esmé began to construct a spreadsheet in his mind, but instead of countless client accounts and ways to be paid interest-free, there were likely names.

**_Katherine Snicket._ **

**Kit would probably be alive, she was always strong. But he was too loyal to his brother to get involved again with a villain. Even more Olaf.**

**_Georgina Orwell._ **

**_Georgina keeps is with me, not with Olaf. She is too good foor him and everything she feels about the man who shot her to death twice is disgust._ **

**_Sally Senald._ **

**_The administrator of the Sebald estate would even be a possibility, but me and Georgina have already put an end to it, after all, everyone should learn not to create expectations about the death of a talented ophthalmologist._ **

**_Monday._ **

**_There is a viability in the woman with the name of the weekly day, but only if it is very desperate. She's treacherous, that's what made us friends in the middle of a split, and Olaf is also aware of that._ **

**_Josephine ... Oh no ..._ **

**_Josephine Anwhistle is a joke by itself and is dead, so it's just another name scratched on the list._ **

**_Maybe I need help._ **

Like an avalanche, Madame Lulu's phrase was reproduced in her mind:

_"Nón need to thank! And Esmé should read with Lulu! "_

After all, she just needed a name. After all, the woman was a seer. And she could help her.

Maybe the fortune teller was useful.

And with that thought in mind, Esmé tied her hair and headed to the fortune teller. Even as her mind shouted,

**_Do not trust her!_ **

 

**_-_ **

 

A skeptical person is one who trusts no one, or almost anyone. A famous unbeliever is the Catholic disciple Thomas, who refused to believe that the man he followed had been resurrected. If he was right to doubt it, it matters little. What matters is that Esme has always been a very skeptical woman. Believing in people, theses, and mystical objects was never her strong point, but still, there she was, in front of a fortune teller's tent, waiting for the answer to her problem.

"Esmé? What do you do here now, please? "

"I want a reading, you promised me one in the morning when you wanted the weather to be... _harmonious_! Do you remember, darling? "

The surprise was explicit in the psychic's face. Her dramatically drawn eyebrows furrowed, leaving her confusion clear, but in the background, Esme saw despair.

"But the Crystal Ball is tired of reading _My_ Olaf!"

"But what about harmony, darling? The Crystal Ball would not hesitate to answer only one question for me in the name of our... _harmony_! "

"Cristal ball nón think much during the afternoon ... Esmé, I think ..."

Menacing sounds are fluid in people's minds. A child may believe that the sound of a horn sounds threatening, as a fortune-teller full of his mental faculties may find the sound of Esmé Gigi Genevive Squaor's fingernails touching each other as it looks clinically at his threatening eyes.

"I think ... Crystal Ball does not bother to answer a question just for Esme ..."

"Great! When do we start?"

"You ask Madame Lulu and go to her tent, tomorrow you come back and ..."

"WHAT?"

She can only be playing with your face!

"The Crystal Ball is shy ..."

"Do I look like that? _Stupid_? "

"Is that your question for the Crystal Ball?"

At this moment Esmé Squalor regained all the patience she had lost in all the conflictual relations she had lived, breathed deeply and ignored her inner voice and her repeated talk about not needing help.

"No... My question is: Does your Crystal Ball sees Olaf, in the present, with a woman who ... is not me?"

One of the definitions of surprise is "that which is pleasant or causes unexpected pleasure" and the blonde did not have to be inside Madame Lulu's head to know that what the fortune-teller felt was just that.

"Do you believe being betrayed by My Olaf?

Although the seer struggled to appear serious, it was explicit how happy she was with Esme's statement, after all, no one who feels sorry shows a morbid, wide smile after receiving such news.

**_You should not have come! She will ridicule you thanks to this man!_ **

"I thought I'd come here to find answers, and not be questioned!"

"You excuse me, I do not imagine that! I'm going to read Esmé right _now_! "

And so the fortune-teller grabbed Esme's arm and led her to the main table. The moment the financier sat in front of the wood, she saw Lulu disappear through the curtains.

The towel was a dark blue, almost black, but what set it apart from Lulu's clothes was his print full of yellow stars. The Crystal Ball was so large that it took up the entire space of the round table and so crystal clear that it reflected the image of the desperate blonde in front of her. And her desperation was that she was wrong.

She was _wrong_ when she trusted Beatrice to tell him what her sugar bowl contained.

She was _wrong_ when she said she would never be betrayed.

And she was _wrong_ to trust the only thing that had ever disappointed her: her sense of smell.

She looked around, and though the scent of books and dust was strangling, no heaps of leaves were seen.

She heard Olaf's description, she actually heard. Yet something within him still believed he was wrong.

She still smelled of _melted caramel, dust, and newspaper._

Less than five minutes later, withdrawing the math from her thoughts again, the fortune teller returned. Before sitting down in front of the blonde, Lulu removed the dark cloak and his footwear, leaving only a blanket, also black, but a little shorter and more transparent.

**_Did she dress like that, too, when Olaf came?_ **

"Crystal ball know Esmé not to be natural blonde."

"No, that's what I asked!"

Before Esme's sentence was finished, she heard a flash of lightning. Tall, hard, and different from the others she had heard on rainy days.

"Can not rush the Crystal Ball, Crystal Ball be shy on the first consultation!"

_**This is useless ...** _

"Esme to present yourself as a financial adviser, please, but Crystal Ball says you do not use your mathematical talents for a long time! Crystal Ball call Esmé a... socialite, actress and accomplice in the moment, please. "

"It was not..."

And then a buzz started. Where he came from was a mystery to mathematics, but that he was there was a certainty.

"Crystal Ball call you from an angry egotist, but to say that you have undeniable skills in aiming and sewing, please."

_**How does she know that?** _

"You suffer also, you suffer by your object."

**_What?_ **

"You know how to love an object but not how to love a person. You become Squalor for convenience and revenge, please. "

_**Oh!** _

"You only like people who love you."

"You are lying!"

At that moment, Esme tried to get up and leave, yet as soon as her leg rose, her knee bumped into a literal sheaf of leaves and everything she was ignoring came back like an uncontrolled avalanche.

_**What is it? See?! Do not trust her!** _

"The Crystal Ball did not lie! You love intense sex and adventure while fleeing from husband. You love being the center of attention. You love being a priority and loving spilled blood. "

**_Yeah! She's not wrong! But do not trust her!_ **

"You do not love _My_ Olaf, you do not even try to love my Olaf. You do not love My Olaf but you want My Olaf alone yours. "

"What does it matter?"

**_Do not trust her!_ **

"But you also be afraid of being left and you... pay attention, please."

There are times when your brain is thinking so much, in so many things and so fast, that more information only makes it worse. Like when a student discovers that he will have six daily tests, three weekly seminars and ten monthly lectures for the next four weeks, or when a flight attendant learns to calm thirty passengers, eight pets, and serve water bottles, all at the same time before your plane crashes. That's exactly what Esmé felt. When she felt the span under the wooden table and felt a hardcover book while listening to her boyfriend's affair.

"Crystal ball says that _My_ Olaf be with someone who is very close to you. Finished reading, please. "

Like a bucket of cold water thrown into a bonfire, Esmé's expectations were erased thanks to the breach of expectation.

"But ... I want her name!"

"Madame Lulu does not take responsibility for means and answers of Crystal Ball. But, you want my advice? "

**_Do not trust her!_ **

"I want to..."

"You leave Madame Lulu's tent and forget everything you've heard."

 

-

 

 

 

The moment he returned to her trailer, Madame Lulu's voice, and all the realities she told Esmé-things she might not even know about herself-waged an endless battle with the touch she felt on her knee to monopolize the mind of the financier.

_It was plastic, but at the same time it was paper. It was like ... the cover of a book._

**_A book._ **

Different people react in different ways to real or abstract stimuli and their epiphanies. Some are paralyzed, others move too fast, the blond in green, just lay on the bed and began to laugh.

She was not wrong at all. Her nose did not fool her.

_**There was at least one book. But there could be more.** _

And this is something she could not wait to find out.

As if his thoughts were a trigger, Olaf entered the trailer - with a lion cub, wearing a muzzle and a dog collar, in one hand and a paper bag full of unidentified papers in another - and finding it left in the bed, he lay next to her, after locking the door.

"Honey, here's your puppy lion! And I bought some fashion magazines for you... Is everything okay now? "

And, after removing his own coat, he began to kiss the base of her throat suggestively. She just hugged the puppy and whispered in her ear "fire" and watched as he began to sniff her and jumped from her lap.

**_He IS a **V** olunteer  **F** eline  **D** etective!_ **

Esme just followed the little one with her eyes, yet Olaf noticed his concern and whispered against his skin.

"The door was locked, it will not escape! Now come here... "

So Viscount began to open her dress. Button by button.

_**I have a Criminal Secrets Hunter! And I can do whatever I want with it!** _

Her dress slid down her arms as her boyfriend placed her in his lap. But he smelled something familiar.

"Olaf... I... I have a headache, darling!"

"Are you _sure_?"

It could be a loving gesture, or even a needy one. But not. It was a brutal gesture, where Olaf tried to show dominance.

**_He betrays you, gives you what you deserve, and some magazines, and believes that you owe him a good fuck?!_ **

But Viscount Olaf was _no one_ to dominate Esmé Squalor. So, still on her boyfriend's lap, the financier held tight in his throat and squeezed it, hard and hard, until her face turned red, her hand let go of her cochle, and he fell, weak and breathless, with his back to the mattress .

" _I am!_ "

And as if nothing had happened, Esme crawled over the reddish man in front of her, lay down under the covers and began to leaf through a magazine.

"Great! Tomorrow we will go north to the Mount Fraught! And do not wait for me to sleep! "

Olaf's voice filled with rage, as he, forgetting to get dressed, got out and knocked on the door, taking the smell differently, before turning on his car and marking the four tires on the pavement, uncontrollably.

_**He will betray you!** _

And for the first time, Esmé did not listen to her thoughts, for all she saw was the light of the most famous tent in Caligari Park being erased, presenting her a great opportunity to discover what that blessed book was.

 

-

 

Are there cases where, at an epiphanic moment, we think of how this person came to be here, like Napoleon when he became the Bourgeois King, just at that historic moment. This is exactly what we thought when we imagined Esmé Gigi Genevive Squalor, the sixth most important financial advisor in the city, squatting, reading archives about her life trapped at a seer's desk.

Newspapers, magazines, letters, folders, photographs, all sorts of documents, she'd just take them out, read them and put them back in place.

**_Madame Lulu is a scam. But a fraud full of information. Information relevant enough to be mine!_ **

But Lulu was still somewhere in the park, and given the complexity of her information and specific timeline attached to everything she could imagine, Esme deduced that Madame Lulu would know if any of her information disappeared.

But if Madame Lulu is a fraud, with her did she know all that? How did she play with my mind like that? And more importantly, how did she know that Olaf betrayed me?

The questions jumped in her mind wildly, and the only conclusion the financier took was that Lulu knew too much. And like everyone who knew too much, it should be eliminated. So Esme had a brilliant idea.

She'd visit the _freaks_.

 

-

 

"You just have to do a simple job. Tomorrow, during the number with the lions, Count Olaf will announce which one of you should jump into the lion pit. But regardless of who is chosen, I want you to push Madame Lulu. "

As Esme made his purpose clear, the trailer was silent as everyone digested that information.

"Does that mean ... that we should kill Madame Lulu?"

_**He thinks it's about Olaf!** _

**_Let him believe that!_ **

"Do not think of it as murder! Think it's a ... dramatic exercise. It's a special surprise for Count Olaf, you're going to show him you're brave enough to be part of his troupe. "

"Pushing Lulu into the moat does not strike me as an act of bravery or a dramatic exercise! Just cruel and wicked. "

Colette's phrase made the financier think. And thinking, Madame Lulu's heavy voice popped into her mind.

_Give people what they want!_

"How could it be cruel and perverse to give people what they want?"

Esmé's question sounded, but with the image of the confused faces he received, he began to develop

"You want to join Count Olaf's troupe; the crowd wants to see someone eaten by the lions; and I want Madame Lulu to be thrown into the pit. Tomorrow, one of you will have the opportunity to give exactly everyone what they want. "

"Grr!"

She did not even need to look to see who would make that sound.

**_This little idiot acts like I did not live with her!_ **

"When you put it that way, it does not sound so evil."

"Of course not! Besides, Madame Lulu wanted to see them being thrown to the lions, so they should be glad to have the opportunity to throw her in their place. "

"But why do you want Madame Lulu to be thrown to the lions?"

_**This girl is smart! Watch out!** _

They do not know the documents! They do not know that Lulu is a fraud! Do not give them information!

"Count Olaf ... thinks that if this park becomes more popular, Madame Lulu can help us with her crystal ball," she said, "but I do not think we need her help. tired of seeing my boyfriend buy presents for her. "

It was not a complete lie, but it was not a complete truth either! However, the lie is relative if compared to the omission of truth.

"That does not seem to be a good reason for anyone to be eaten by lions"

Said the other ... freak.

_**Act! Act like the idiot she thinks you are!** _

"No wonder a two-headed person gets a little confused ..."

And at that moment Esmé stretched her long-fingernailed hands to simultaneously stroke the faces of the two in disguise, only to see the explicit terror on their faces.

"Once you enter Olaf's troupe, you will not have that kind of thinking ... so aberrant."

_**Olaf's Troupe. Look at you! Outsource work in the name of something greater! At least your hands will not be bloodstained!** _

"Just imagine, tomorrow we will pass on aberrations to Count Olaf's trusted men."

The hunchback said, so excited, that Esmé started to smile, but what made her happy was what the contortionist said.

"I prefer the term 'people of confidence'!"

**_She is intelligent!_ **

**_It reminds you, only without a sense of style, with an aberrant aesthetic and a fragile emotional!_ **

**_Okay, maybe I do not actually remember you!_ **

"To celebrate their new jobs, I brought a gift for each one."

"A gift! Madame Lulu never gave us a present. "

Esme was always known for thinking of everything and for getting exactly what she wanted, of undefined forms and no matter how. Sometimes she used seduction, but it was not necessary here, and Esmé does not know or could do it; Sometimes she persuaded people; But there, she used something different.

There, she give thing to them.

"This is for you ... Hugo!"

And at that moment, she pulled out a huge dark coat, which she found in the costume kit in her trailer. Esmé had chosen, each aberrant gift carefully to focus solely on its functionality.

The coat was so large that when Hugo tried it, he realized that covering his hump, even with its irregular shape. The freak looked at himself in the mirror and, with his eyes full of tears, turned to his colleagues, exultant.

"He covers my hump! I ... I do not even look like a freak!"

"Saw? Olaf is already making his life a lot better. "

Citing the boyfriend in the whole sentence, it was never something the financier imagined himself doing. However, today was a different day.

**_If something goes wrong, it will be the culprit!_ **

"And look what I have for you, Colette! It's such a loose and loose fabric that even twisting your body the way it is no one will notice that you're a contortionist. "

"It's the realization of a dream! I'd throw a hundred people in the lion pit to use something like that! "

The moment Colette made her emotion clear, as she tore the kimono out of Esme's hands, the financier realized something important.

**_She is the strongest of them! It's worth keeping it close!_ **

"And Kevin ..."

Oh, that's the most aesthetically pleasing of all!

**_We could have some fun!_ **

"This piece of rope is for tying your right hand behind your back, so you will not have any chance of using it."

"So I'm going to be left-handed, like normal people! YEAH!"

The ambidextrous gleefully turned to Esmé, testing his psychological nymphomaniac even as he inadvertently asked her to tie his right hand, and in an instant the man had only one operative arm.

"I have not forgotten you... Two"

Esmé's smile was frighteningly suggestive, but she still did not lose her composure and kept doing what she did.

She continued to act.

"Chabo, here is a large razor that Olaf uses when he needs to trim his beard. I thought you might want to trim that wolf hair a little. And for you, Beverly-Elliot, I have this. "

The financier unfastened the brown bag of her green dress and held it out to the almost contracted, triumphant.

"This bag is perfect for covering one of your heads," he explained. "You're going to look like a person with a single head carrying a bag over his shoulder. Is not that great? "

"I think so.."

"What's the matter with you?"

"They offer you a thought-provoking job and a generous gift, and none of the heads are encouraged!"

Hugo's questioning and Colette's observation were plausible if Beatrice's blood did not run through the veins of these worms.

**_They will not want to do it!_ **

"You too, Chabo, do not look very enthusiastic."

"I think this is an opportunity we should refuse"

**_I said!_ **

"Nothing personal, working in a theatrical troupe should be exciting, and Count Olaf seems to be a formidable person."

"So what's the problem?"

"Well ... I do not feel very comfortable with this story of playing Madame Lulu to the lions."

"As the second head I am, I agree with her and Chabo as well."

**_They are so pathetic!_ **

"It just does not look right! Madame Lulu is not the nicest person I know, but I do not think she deserves to be devoured. "

**_Merit._ **

**_This is better than I expected._ **

Esmé opened a big fake smile and leaned over to make them another caress, giving himself again with terrified childish looks.

"Do not let your heads worry about whether or not it deserves to be devoured! You do not deserve to be half a wolf, do you? " In this world, people do not always have what they deserve. "

"It still seems a perverse thing to me!"

"I do not think! This is giving people what they want, as Lulu herself says. "

"How about you consult the pillow?"

Esme's suggestion came in the midst of eminent discussion, and so the blonde got up from the table.

"As soon as tomorrow's show is over, Olaf will head north to the Dead Man's Mountains, and if Madame Lulu has been devoured by then, you will be able to accompany her. Decide in the morning if you want to be brave members of a theatrical troupe or cowardly aberrations of a decaying park. "

"I do not need to consult the pillow."

"Neither have I made up my mind."

"Yes! I want to join Count Olaf. "

**_Esmé Squalor: 3_ **

**_Madame Lulu: 0_ **

**_Good job with the freaks!_ **

"I'm glad to hear this! Maybe you can persuade your colleagues to join you by joining me to join him. "

Opening the trailer door, the financier could not help herself and looked scornfully at the only ones who did not want to be hired.

"Think about it, Beverly-Eliott and Chabo! It may even be a perverse thing to play Madame Lulu in a pit full of carnivorous lions! But if you do not join us, where else can you go?"

Their terrified looks were enough for Esme's self-control to evaporate, so she replied with a long, perverse laugh.

"If you do not choose the perverse thing, what the hell are you going to do?"

The question seemed and indeed was rhetorical, even because Esmé Gigi Genevive Squalor knew very well what they would do.

 

-

 

When you return home after a day's work, your brain understands that the place is the same, but your psychologist says you are different from the person who left that space in the morning. This was the exact feeling that Esmé Squalor felt inside, after returning to her trailer after receiving a reading from Madame Lulu, discovering her private library and consequently that she was a fraud, gaining a carnivorous sniffer, making sure her boyfriend to betray and converse - and induce - with the aberrations.

But something, in that fateful night, sounded wrong.

The financier read the magazines Olaf had given her, trying to dispel the doubts that monopolized her thoughts.

Unsuccessfully.

A scent was permeating his skin. And all she wanted was a good shower.

So she headed for the makeshift shower, and began her dawn by pouring the icy water over her body.

After a long enough time to be ignored, the noise of Olaf's engine was heard by his girlfriend. She had two options: get out of the bathroom and lie down next to the man who fled the city with her, or continue in the shower.

**_He betrayed you!_ **

**_He was the only one who had the guts of it!_ **

**_He does not deserve you!_ **

And with red eyes, the blonde continued her bath.

 

-

 

After a long time, the blonde finally left the shower. And with her body still dripping and her face red from crying, she returned to the master bedroom. To find it _empty_.

The only living soul, besides her, in that room, was the little lion who sniffed Olaf's coat.

As soon as she got close to pull him out of the puppy's clutches, she noticed that the puppy had the same scent as her boyfriend.

**_The smell did not come from you, Esmé, it came from Olaf!_ **

**_The smell passed from him to you as he hugged and kissed you!_ **

At that moment, the financier, still naked, touched the coat forgotten by her partner on the floor, and sat down on the mattress.

**_It smelled strange, not you!_ **

So Esme carried the cloth to her face and smelled the odor.

**_He smelled of ..._ **

**_Molten caramel, dust and newspapers._ **

**_He smelled like Madame Lulu._ **

Turning, as fast as she can, to her window, Esmé looked in the direction of Madame Lulu's private tent.

It was on.

If the financier struggled, she could hear the sound of laughter and naked bodies touching. Perhaps she could even hear the love vows Madame Lulu said to Olaf, real or not, as he bit down and squeezed every part of her body.

Just like it did in the morning. And exactly as he had done the day before.

**_I should not have trusted her!_ **

Right now Esmé was about to lose all of her self-control. But before that, she would dress for the occasion.

 

-

 

All that Esmé remembered, when he left Lulu's tent early in the morning, were three things.

The disgust she felt as she invaded the dark tent and found the two bodies sweating and disgusting in the embrace of sheets and kisses; The desperation expressed in the face of Viscount and Madame Lulu, or rather Olivia Caliban, when she pointed her pistol toward them; The two dead on the ground, with a single bullet each, in both foreheads.

After all, as the false psychic herself said, Esme always had a great aim.

As soon as the two loud bangs were heard, all the freaks and the theater troupe were shouted at by the financier.

The troupe and the aberrations appear sleepy but frightened, and Esme's clothes did not help to calm them.

Her long, white dress, so long that it spread over her feet and spread across the floor around her, as if she were planted in the middle of a large puddle of milk. Except for the squirt of fresh blood in the middle of it.

"Where's the boss? What did you do to him?"

Fernald's voice sounded so desperate. It even sounded like he would have the courage to attack her.

"I'm the Boss now... and things will change! Okay?"

The answer changes, sounded affirmative to Esmé and that was enough for her and then she did what she wanted to do since staring at the little orphans.

"First, stop pretending!"

The children's faces writhed in fear, while denial passed through their minds, until the Baudelaire's eldest spoke.

"How did you know?"

"I have intelligence ... that's enough! And you're wearing my blouse ... It was tailor-made!"

"What will you do with us?"

The boy's choked voice sounded, and for a second, she saw Beatrice reflected in his eyes. At that moment she got very close to the three of them and whispered.

"Nothing! I am going to leave you alive, with all the memories of all the places you have suffered, running away from Olaf and me, only to wane in the midst of memories while I recover what is mine ..."

The children's tears were like the most perfect mathematical account, straight and constant. The younger tried to advance the financier, but a single click unlocked her weapon, causing Violet to control her sister.

"And speaking of memories, see what we have here!"

So the blonde gave her final nod. She took a picture of some members of the CSC, including the Baudelaires and a small chain with a B-shaped pendant, all in pink.

When Violet saw the necklace, her hand went to her own neck, the desperate search for the rosy chain. But the orphan did not find the chain, so famous for always being on the neck of the matriarch Baudelaire, and thus began to cry more strongly.

"A photo of _Mommy_ and _Daddy_ with their co-workers...  and _some_ pendant ..."

"How did you get this?"

"Give us back!"

**_Their despair is the least that them disgusting blood deserves!_ **

"Can't you see Baudelaires? Now I'm going to destroy all that's left of Beatrice ... In the first few months you'll still have fresh memories, but then her face will be blurred in your mind. one more specific voice ... Do not you see, orphans? "

At that moment, the blonde's eyes were also red and full of tears, but she continued.

"I'm going to steal from you in a way that even Beatrice did not, I'll steal from you thing by thing, and I'll steal what matters... But look on the bright side, no one here will lose another miserable second behind you orphans ... because in very little time, there will be nothing left to be destroyed... "

"At least we'll be together!"

The whispered phrase by the older Baudelaire almost made Esmé laugh, but she had an even better idea.

"Oh of course... But first you will do something for me! You will burn this place!"

"We will not!"

The two orphans spoke at the same time, but something inside her mind said that the baby also meant the same thing, but they had no choice.

"Oh, you go, and you know why? It's because I'll be gone in less time than you realize and the audience will come and watch a show! What would they imagine if 3 fugitive police murderers were alone in a scene of... another crime? "

The children were silent, as if thinking of how or what they would do. But Esme did not give enough time for any noble thoughts to sound.

"That does not sound good, does it?"

"Do not make us... Please!"

Violet's voice sounded so broken, so Esme grabbed the girl's hair and held them as she spoke.

"This is my deal, darling, the lions are trapped, no one will kill you! Just burn this place and stay away from me, and I will do the same! Just... think!"

"How will we know we can trust you?"

Now the boy sounded more calm, already unlocking the buttons as he got rid of his shared shirt.

"There is nothing that I want to destroy in you... I'm not Olaf and unlike him, I proved my point... "

So, to show, she attached the necklace with the letter B on her neck. After that, she turned her back on the Baudelaires and, with the gun in her hand, screamed at the troupe actors and the freaks.

"You have twenty minutes to decide where you are going! With me, toward success or... Well... nowhere, since not even a decadent park will have. "

So she trapped her little lion in the cage, which was already behind Olaf's car, and got into it, starting to organize the sheets and documents she had monopolized from the Tent of Destiny just to give time to her surroundings.

The first to get in the car was Colette, followed by Kevin and Hugo. After that, they entered one by one, Olaf's trupe, but not Fernald.

The Baudelaires moved toward a purple tent with flower prints, and there they started the fire. With that signal, Esmé started the car, ready to start, until she heard Colette's voice in the passenger seat.

"Where are we going, Boss?"

"Let's find _my sugar bowl_ and the _Snicket File_ , darling!"

And so the financier sped toward the Misty Mountains, following, even with tears in her eyes, her _sixth sense_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comment what you think, darling!
> 
> Twitter: @honeysorwell


End file.
